The Widow (4 page)

In the glare of the front-door light, Lou looked thin and tired, his hair grayer. He planned to retire in the fall after thirty years on the job, fifteen of them in the Criminal Investigative Division. He was a decent guy with an extraordinary record, one of the most respected detectives in Maine. But riding off into the sunset with Christopher Browning’s murder unsolved grated on him. An FBI agent married to John March’s daughter, a man beloved on Mt. Desert Island—shot on his honeymoon within shouting distance of his boyhood home, left to bleed to death amid the rocks, seaweed, salt water and gulls.

Who wouldn’t want to find Chris’s killer?

“What can I do for you, Lou?” Doyle asked.

Lou rubbed his lower back. He’d have driven to Bar Harbor from his home hear Bangor. “Fog’s rolling in. I can smell it.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“I don’t like driving in it. My eyes aren’t what they used to be. How’s Katie?”

“Fine. She’s in England.”

“I heard. Working with Owen Garrison’s outfit now?”

“Yeah.” Doyle knew Lou was just being friendly, but he hadn’t had much patience for the past few days and wanted the older man to state his business. “The boys and I are on our own for a few weeks. They’re inside now, waiting for me.”

“Sure, sure. I’ll get to the point. Has Abigail Browning been in touch?”

Hell.
Doyle shook his head.

“She got a call last night. I thought you should know,” Lou said in a professional tone that belied his personal interest in the case. He then gave Doyle details on the call. “I doubt it’ll amount to anything, but—I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”

“Is Abigail on her way here?”

Lou sighed. “I didn’t ask, and she didn’t say. But what do you think?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s here now.”

Lou kept his steady gaze on Doyle. “I don’t know about you, but I never thought I’d still be hunting Chris Browning’s killer after seven years.”

“Didn’t you? Here’s how I see it. A burglar targeted the island seven years ago and stole a lot of jewelry from rich summer residents. He landed at the Browning house, thinking it was a guest cottage for the Garrisons or the Coopers, and Abigail surprised him. She was assaulted, and Chris took matters into his own hands. The burglar killed him and took off, never to return.”

“That’s one scenario.”

“It’s the only one that makes sense and fits the facts. If Abigail thinks she’s going to come up here and find answers, she’s wrong.”

“She’s thought that for seven years—”

“And she’s been wrong for seven years. She just stirs people up for no good reason.”

Lou sank back against the hood of his car. “The caller said things were happening here.”

“It’s a busy island that gets three million tourists every year,” Doyle said. “Of
course
things are happening here. You can cherry-pick a dozen possibilities without breaking into a sweat or thinking hard.”

“What about things happening among the Garrisons and the Coopers?”

Doyle scoffed. “Something’s always going on with them. Owen’s starting up this field academy. He just got back from digging for earthquake survivors.”

“The Coopers?”

“Grace Cooper’s up for a big State Department appointment. Her father’s doing some complicated business deal. Her uncle’s designed a new garden for one of his rich friends. Her brother’s here this summer. He made it through a whole year of college.” Doyle narrowed his eyes on his fellow, more experienced law enforcement officer. “But you know all that, don’t you, Lou?”

“Yeah. I do. Well…” He smiled. “I hadn’t heard about Linc Cooper not getting kicked out of another college. You’ll call me when Abigail turns up?”

“I’ll call. Thanks for stopping by. By the way, did you stop by the Browning house just now?”

Lou shook his head. “No, why?”

Doyle decided not to tell him about the boys and their ghost. “Just curious. Sure you don’t want to come in?”

“I should get back. Say hi to the boys for me.”

After Lou left, Doyle locked up his car and headed inside. The house wasn’t the same without Katie. He didn’t know how he’d manage for six weeks without her. The place needed vacuuming. He had to take out the trash, clean the bathrooms, mop the kitchen floor. Normally he and Katie and the boys split the housework, but he could see now he hadn’t been doing his fair share.

He didn’t need to deal with Abigail right now. She had a way of getting on his last nerve.

With a little luck, she’d get assigned to a hot case in Boston and forget about the anonymous call. Let the state and local police investigate. Stay out of it.

Doyle snorted, noticing he’d left the coffeepot on that morning.

What was he thinking?

Luck just never seemed to be on his side.

A
bigail left Boston early Monday morning, and by the time she took Route 3 over the Trenton Bridge onto Mt. Desert Island, she ran into a wall of fog. Not pretty fog, either. It was slit-your-throat depressing fog. She had her coffee can of journal ashes on the front seat next to her. She’d almost dumped them at a rest stop between Augusta and Bangor, just to be rid of them. It was as if every memory of her life with Chris was in there, condensed, trying to pull her inside with them and draw her into the past, keep her there forever and never, ever let her go.

She stopped in Bar Harbor at a streetside deli-restaurant and bought containers of clam chowder, lobster salad and crab salad, and two huge peanut butter cookies. Droopy-eyed tourists griped about the fog.
“It could last for days.”

Well, Abigail thought, climbing back into her car, it could.

When she arrived at her house on the southern end of the island, the fog, if possible, was even thicker, encasing the tall spruce and pine trees in gray, obscuring any view. Water, rocks and sky were indistinguishable.

The front steps were slick with condensation, and the air tasted of salt and wet pine needles.

Her 1920s house was too small, too simple, for today’s coastal living standards. If she put it on the market, it would sell for its location. A new owner would almost certainly bulldoze it and build from scratch.

Perhaps just as well
.

She unlocked the door and, with the damp air, had to push hard to get it open. Inside, her house felt like a tomb. Cold, dark, still. Midafternoon, and it might have been dusk.

Flipping on a light in the entry, Abigail walked into the kitchen and dropped her keys on the counter, the silence not comforting, only making her feel more alone.

The ashes called to her.

She could hear Chris’s voice.

“It’s not a palace, but I wouldn’t give up this place for the world. I love it here, Abigail. I don’t want to live here. But I don’t ever want to sell it.”

He’d wanted her to fall in love with his boyhood home—not the house so much as the island, its breathtaking beauty, its simplest pleasures. She didn’t need to have the same memories he had, he’d said.

“We’ll make our own memories.”

She spun on her toes and ran back outside, slipping on the steps and the stone walk, sinking into the soft gravel of the driveway as she went around to the passenger side of her car. She ripped open the door and grabbed the coffee can.

“We’ll raise our kids out here.”

Without thinking, she ducked under the dripping branches of a pine tree on the side of the house, emerging on the strip of grass that passed for a yard.

She made her way through the gloom along a footpath worn into the damp grass and rocky dirt, following it to the tangle of rugosa roses and the tumble of granite boulders that marked the water’s edge. No marshes and bogs here, no gentle easing from land to ocean. Two centuries ago, the Brownings had parked themselves on the rockbound island and carved out a living for themselves amid Mt. Desert’s gales, salt spray, acidic soil, impenetrable granite and incredible, austere beauty.

Abigail tucked her coffee can under one arm. Beneath her, the Atlantic was gray and glassy, barely visible in the fog. She heard seagulls but couldn’t tell how far away they were. Sucking in a breath, she plunged down the rocks, careful with her footing on steep, potentially slippery sections. As her familiarity with her stretch of coast kicked in, she moved faster.

The tide was out, and she dropped down from a rectangular boulder onto smaller rocks covered in seaweed and barnacles, cold, gray water seeping over them. She could feel the dampness in her bones now. When she’d packed up for Boston last night, after Scoop and Bob had left her with her notes and files and mess to clean up, she’d imagined dumping her ashes on a crisp, clear Maine afternoon.

She crept out to the edge of a rock slab—the water was deeper here, deep enough for the ashes. Holding the coffee can in front of her, she peeled off the plastic lid.

“Abigail?”

“Oh, my God!”

Startled, she spun around at the voice, real or imagined, and the coffee can went flying, ashes spilling over her, the rock, the water. The can banged off granite and into the gray ocean.

“Chris?”

She shook herself. What was wrong with her, calling out to her dead husband?

Squatting down, she reached for the coffee can, but it floated farther away. Determined, she lurched forward—too far forward. She dropped her left hand onto the rock at her side to regain her balance, but a cluster of sharp barnacles dug into her palm. She jerked her hand back and started to jump up, but slipped, tipping over into the water.

She shuddered at the shock of cold water and scrambled right back up onto her rock. She was soaked, cursing.
Freezing
. But as she climbed up onto a boulder above the tideline, she slipped again, banging her knee.

A man materialized out of the fog above her and lowered his hand to her. “You’re wearing the wrong shoes.”

“The wrong—” She looked up at Owen Garrison, handsome as ever, dry. “I nearly drown, and you’re worried about my shoes?”

“Now that you didn’t drown, yes. You’re going to slip and slide all the way back up to your house in those shoes.”

They were five-dollar slip-on sneakers she’d picked up for the summer. Bright red. Fun. Not intended for tramping through the wilds of Maine.

She took Owen’s hand, noticed the warmth of his firm grip as he helped her up onto his boulder. If she didn’t accept his help, she’d only land up in a worse predicament. Maybe break an ankle.

She had to be practical.

“You startled me,” she said. “That’s why I fell.”

He shrugged. “Sorry. Did you cut yourself on the rocks?”

“I scraped my hand. It’s no big deal. The cold’s numbed it.”

She was shivering. She hadn’t expected the ash-dumping to turn into an ordeal, and she still had on her shorts and T-shirt from her trip. Even without the dunking, she’d have been cold in the relentless fog.

Owen wore jeans and a lightweight fleece the color of the fog—and, she noticed, of his eyes.

“Want me to fetch whatever it is you dropped?” he asked.

“It’s just a coffee can of ashes.”

“From your woodstove?”

She shook her head. “I brought them up here with me—”

“Abigail…”

“Oh—no, no. They’re not
human
ashes.” ButAbigail had no intention of telling him they were ashes of seven years’ worth of journals she’d burned yesterday in a grill. “They’re just from something I burned. I can fetch the can later.”

Owen, however, had already jumped lightly down to the wet slab below the tideline. He scooped up the coffee can and, in two long strides, was back up on the dry boulder with her—not breathing hard, not wet. She did notice he’d gotten a glob of ashes on his hand and fleece.

“Thanks,” she said, taking the can from him. “I should go back and put on some dry clothes. That water’s damn cold.”

“About fifty-five degrees.”

She winced. “Now I’m
really
freezing. What’re you doing out here?”

“I heard you and decided to investigate.”

“But you didn’t know it was me,” she said.

“No, I didn’t.”

He wasn’t explaining any further, obviously. Abigail started past him, slipped, cursed and felt him clamp a hand on to her upper arm. She gritted her teeth. “I see what you mean about my shoes.”

“Hikers fall all the time because they underestimate how slippery wet rock can be.”

“I’m not a hiker. I was just out here doing a cleansing ritual—never mind.” She sighed at him. “You’re going to hold my arm until I reach grass, aren’t you?”

“Unless you want to keep falling.”

“Or I could take my shoes off. Except then I’d be even colder.” She smiled. “I have tender feet.”

He hadn’t released her arm. She wasn’t wearing her weapon, thankfully. It was locked up in her car. All the panic and urgency she’d felt about getting rid of the ashes had dissipated with the shock of the cold water and her sexy Maine neighbor. Now, she just wanted warm clothes and a bowl of hot chowder.

Because her shoes were less than useless wet, Owen ended up half-carrying her up the rocks.

“I’ve dripped on you,” she said when they reached the path.

“Not a problem. When did you get here?”

“An hour ago.”
If
that.

He nodded to her Folgers can. “And you had to dump your ashes right away?”

“I need the can for paint. I’m going to be working on the house.”

“Ah.”

She ignored his skepticism. “I didn’t realize you were in Maine.”

“I’ve only been here a few days. Fast Rescue is opening a field academy in Bar Harbor. We hope to have it up and running this fall.”

Abigail remembered her caller’s words.

“Things are happening on Mt. Desert.”

Owen Garrison and his nonprofit outfit starting a field academy was something that was happening. Had her caller read about it in the paper, on the Internet? Heard about it from a friend?

And what possible difference could Owen’s presence and a new training facility make in the investigation into Chris’s murder?

“Why Maine?” she asked.

“Makes sense. Katie Alden is perfect to be the director.” He touched Abigail’s shoulder. “You should get into those dry clothes.”

The combination of his tone and her surroundings—her fatigue, her raw emotions, the fog—had his words curling up her spine. She backed away from him, sliding in the grass. She finally kicked off her shoes, scooped them up and continued on barefoot, turning when she reached the bottom step of her porch. “Thank you for your help.”

“Anytime.”

“I’ll be more careful about my choice of shoes next time.”

She ran inside, not stopping until she reached her one bathroom upstairs. She grabbed a towel and started to dry off, but caught her reflection in the mirror.

Her forehead and cheeks were smeared with soot.

So much for playing the experienced, confident Boston homicide detective.

As she dried her face, she burst into laughter.

On his way back along the rocks from Abigail Browning’s house, Owen watched a seagull plunge into the fog and disappear, and he thought of his long-dead sister.

Doe had wanted to become an ornithologist.

“Don’t you love that word, Owen? Say it. Ornithologist.”

Although her given name was Dorothy, their grandmother—the inimitable Polly Garrison—had nicknamed her Doe because she was nimble and had hair the color of a deer’s coat.

And innocent eyes, Owen thought.

Such innocent eyes.

When she fell into the Atlantic, slipping on the wet cliffs through the woods on the other side of the Browning house, farther up the headland, her deer-colored hair had swirled in the waves like seaweed.

Owen had been about twenty yards behind her, and when he ran to the edge of the rock, the tide had pulled Doe farther out. Helpless to save her, Owen had tried to scream for his parents, anyone, but no sound came out. He’d had no whistle. Doe had run down from their summer house, crying, and he’d followed her, hoping to console her so that she’d pull herself together in time to go hiking with him after lunch.

Help had arrived in the form of the Brownings in their lobster boat. But they were too late. Everyone was too late.

Forcing himself to exhale, Owen pulled off his fleece. His skin was clammy, and the closeness of the fog was making him claustrophobic. It was his one weakness in the work he did—he didn’t like feeling closed in. He’d learned to control his reaction and focus on the job at hand.

That’s the problem, he thought. He didn’t have enough to do. His mind was free to go off on tangents.

And being around Abigail Browning always got to him.

He stood on a coarse granite slab above the water, above the narrow crevice where he had found Chris Browning on a cold, clear July dawn, the sky streaked with shades of lavender and pink.

Owen had found the shell casings first—up at the remains of his family’s original house. Even now, in the impenetrable fog, he could see the silhouette of its skeletal chimney, sunken and crumbled but, still, partially intact. The perfect spot for Chris’s shooter to hide.

Retreating back through the woods to the private drive would have been easy. A car concealed in the woods. A bicycle. A friend on the way. Who’d have noticed?

Chris was an FBI agent. He knew the island better than most.

For too long, no one had considered he might be in trouble.

His dark-eyed wife, a bump on her head, her legs unsteady, had been drawn to the spot of her husband’s murder as if by instinct, as if Chris, settled now in death, had called her there to end her uncertainty.